Therapy
by Waldo
Summary: Dan’s slowly learning that he doesn’t have to deal with Sam’s death alone. DC


Danny was watching the lights on the skyline blink on and off. The show had been okay, Natalie even went so far as to say it had gone well, but the truth was, he hardly remembered doing it.

He was vaguely aware of someone standing in the office doorway. Probably Casey, judging by the stillness and silence. Natalie or Dana would have come barreling in looking for one of them. Jeremy would have asked why the lights were out. Kim would have made some kind of crack about him being so in the dark that it had taken on a literal aspect. Isaac would have cleared his throat or said Dan's name softly to get his attention. He wouldn't be standing there shifting from foot to foot, softly rustling his pants pockets as he shoved his hands in them and took them out again.

Dan wondered when he'd become so observant.

He wondered what Casey wanted.

He wondered what the hell was so wrong with him that Abby had picked up on it in a damn bar.

"So here's the thing," Casey said finally, when Danny didn't turn to acknowledge him. "I think I screwed up."

Danny thought back through the last few hours. The show… oh, that. "So you said Lynette Georgine instead of Georgine Lynette. It probably came off the wire without the comma, and with names like that…"

"No, Danny," Casey smiled and joined him at the window. "During the Y2K test." Danny knew that Casey had shoved his hands in his pockets again, even though he still hadn't turned to look at him. "Danny… Danny, I thought it really was a date, so I was teasing you about it being an appointment. I didn't… I didn't realize you were really… seeing her… you know, professionally. I shouldn't have made light of it. I'm sorry."

Dan smiled sadly, his eyes finally leaving the buildings and sliding to the floor. "Would you believe me if I said I didn't know I was seeing her professionally either?" He finally cocked his head to see Casey, to see if he believed him.

He looked a little incredulous.

"Seriously. Abby and I… crossed our wires or something. After we talked in the bar she said, 'here's my card, call me.' I assumed she meant for dinner or drinks or something. I still thought that when I went over there. Then… I don't know." He shrugged; trying like hell not to sniffle and hoping that Casey wasn't looking at him because he knew his eyes would be just a little too bright.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm that bad, huh?"

Casey reached over and pulled his desk chair around and straddled it. "What do you mean?"

"I talked to her in a bar for twelve minutes and she immediately deduced that I'm a head case? Is it that apparent?" He hated the way his voice was edging on hysterical. It made his questions rhetorical.

Casey reached up and grabbed his arm, pulling him around to sit on the couch near him. "You know what I've always noticed?" he asked, avoiding directly answering Dan's questions. "In the ten years that I've known you, your… default… for lack of a better word has been… sad." Casey found it a bit ironic that with all his vocabulary he was back to first grade vocabulary for the best way to describe Danny. It reminded him of the papers Charlie used to bring home from school where he had to read the sentence and then color in the face that matched the emotion the sentence evoked. Happy, sad, mad, confused… He tried to come up with something more descriptive, more specific. Morose evoked a sense of bitterness that he generally didn't associate with Danny. Despondent was too severe to be right most days. Bummed wasn't severe enough and always seemed to imply a temporary state. No … Danny was sad more often than anything else.

"Sad?" Dan finally repeated after a long pause.

"Yeah. I mean, you have good days. More than a few, but unless something really good has happened recently, you always seem kind of… down. I've never known what to do about that. Hell, it took me about three years to figure out that I wasn't to blame for it."

Danny's head snapped up. "Blame? Why would you think you were to blame?" Almost as soon as he asked the question he answered it for himself.

"Lisa," they both said together.

"She never got angry with me, she just got… disappointed, sad. I had this perpetual feeling of having let her down. And I guess I thought that maybe you and I had the same problem. After a while I realized it wasn't me, but I still didn't know what to about it. I want to help. If I can." Casey had reached up and wove his fingers through Dan's.

"Me being depressed isn't your fault, Case. Hell, there were days –" he stopped himself suddenly.

"What?" Casey prompted gently.

"Nothing." He shook his head and pulled his hand away, "Nothing, Case, really."

"Danny… Danny what were you going to say?"

"I wasn't… I just… " He leaned forward until his forehead almost rested on his knees and his arms hugged his legs. "I don't want to freak you out about my mental health. I mean, any more than I apparently have."

"What were you going to say, Danny?"

Dan sat up enough to rest his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. "I don't think I was all that serious…. But…"

Casey waited quietly this time, letting Dan do this in his own way.

"But… sometimes Case, I think if you hadn't been there for me, I wouldn't be here either… you know?"

Casey reached over and grabbed his hand back and squeezed it. "I'm glad I could help." He knew he should have been surprised that Danny had had suicidal thoughts before, but he really wasn't. He wondered how close he was to having them again but couldn't find a way to ask politely.

There was a long silence. Casey held Dan's hand in his and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. Dan was subliminally aware of the crew packing it in and the bullpen emptying out behind him, but he and Casey stayed where they were. "I miss him. A lot," he finally whispered.

"Sam?"

"Yeah."

"I wish I could have known him," Casey said honestly.

"He was so smart, Casey. He was…" Dan snickered, "I guess he was a little like you. He corrected my grammar starting in about the second grade. Started correcting my spelling when he was like six. Anything I could break, he could fix. VCRs, our old Atari, the alarm clock I smashed one morning when I was too hung over to find the button to turn it off the civilized way… He learned to speak Hindi from a kid who transferred into a couple of his junior high classes from New Dehli. He could have been… President, the next Bill Gates or the next Mother Theresa or all three in one… if he'd just … lived." He had to stop talking then, the tears choking his voice. He squeezed Casey's hand tightly and wrestled his breathing under control.

"Shh. It's okay to miss him, Danny." Casey grabbed the box of Kleenex off the side table and handed a few to Danny who pressed them against his eyes.

When he could speak again, he looked up. "Is it? Do I have that right, Case? I mean, it's my fault he's dead, do I really get to miss him? I mean when we broke our toys as kids my dad used to say that we didn't get new ones since we couldn't take care of the ones we had. And we couldn't have cared about things that much if we didn't take good enough care of them to keep them from getting broken."

"This is so different, Danny. So different. And believe me, as a dad, I can say your dad was full of crap. Even when he's as careful as can be, Charlie sometimes breaks things or loses things. It's part of being a kid. And you were, Danny. You were just a kid. Kids make dumb mistakes. If your dad had been paying just a little bit of attention, he would have known what you were into. But I suspect if your dad had been paying just a little bit of attention you wouldn't have been into half the stuff you were into."

Danny shrugged, squeezing his eyes shut. "We were so close, Case. David's like eleven years older than I am, and actually Sam and my half-brother from my mom's first marriage. I mean, I never think of him as a half-brother or whatever like that. His dad died about two years before my parents got married, so he was always around when I was growing up. I mean, until I was seven and he went to college. But Sam… Sam was two years younger than me. We went to elementary school together, I used to have to leave my second grade class five minutes early to pick him up from his kindergarten and walk him home because the big kids – you know, the fifth graders – in the hall scared him. My junior year I got my license and my mom said that the only way I would get a car was if I agreed to drive Sam to school and take him home after practice or band or whatever we had that night." His voice broke when he said, "He got the car when he turned sixteen, since I didn't need it at school."

Casey kept his hold on Dan's hand as he got up and pushed the desk chair away and moved to sit by Dan on the couch. He pulled Dan over until he rested his head on Casey's lap. "Shh… shh…" he whispered. Danny almost never talked about Sam. Most people at CSC had no idea he had had a younger brother until the network demanded that he make an apology for telling the truth as he saw it. Whatever Abby had him thinking about, it was producing interesting results. "Let all this go, Danny. Let it all out."

Danny laughed bitterly through his tears and struggled to sit up. "This is ridiculous. This is… I've never… In the eleven years he's been gone, I've never cried over him."

Casey reached up and stroked Danny's cheek with his thumb, wiping away a tear. "Then don't you think it's about time?"

Danny rolled his eyes up, trying to dry them without being obvious. "I don't know, Case. I don't know what's happening to me. I just… I don't give a damn about things that I used to love. I get… sometimes it's so hard not to take jokes personally… I know I've never been the most… stable person in any given room, but…" He ran his fingers roughly through his hair. "I had no idea I was this bad. I really didn't." He looked a question at Casey, almost a dare.

"You've been wound a little tighter than usual lately, but not so bad that I thought anything… serious was wrong. I guess I figured that if it were really serious… you'd tell me."

Danny sagged against the couch, stretching his feet out in front of him, dropping his head against the back. "Here's irony for you…"

"Hm?" Casey asked, studying him.

"I had actually talked myself into believing that if you hadn't sat me down to tell me that I was becoming an absolute basketcase that I must be doing okay. I was waiting for you to tell me."

"I would have, you know. If I thought that your personal… stuff… was affecting the show or if you'd become… unreasonable or unusually unhappy… I'd have said something. I wouldn't let you keep hurting, Danny. Please believe that."

Dan sighed. "I do."

"Good," Casey answered.

Silence filled the room for a long while before Casey patted Dan's leg, "Come on, I'll drive you home."

"Hey Case?" Danny asked as they got up and grabbed their coats.

"Yeah?"

"Can… Can you stay tonight? I'm trying really hard to process all this and… I just don't want to be alone with all of it." Danny studied his shoes as he spoke and picked at the collar of his jacket.

Casey reached up and squeezed Dan's arm. "Of course. Thanks for asking," he said solemnly, trying to get Dan to meet his eyes and not succeeding. "Come here," he whispered, pulling Danny into a tight hug. "It's gonna be okay. I promise. It's gonna be okay."

Danny nodded against him, sniffing. "I know," he whispered, trying to sound as certain as Casey did.


End file.
